Subsidy guidelines for senior high released

The Department of Education (DepEd) has released the guidelines on its voucher program subsidizing fees of public junior high graduates who will enroll in private senior high schools next year.

All students who will finish Grade 10 in public high schools – including state or local universities and colleges – are qualified to apply for the voucher program.

Current grantees of the education service contracting program are also qualified to enroll in the voucher system, but will get only 80 percent of the voucher value.

Graduates of private junior high schools may also apply for vouchers, but they will be subject to an assessment of their socio-economic status.

Application for vouchers will start on Nov. 9, and will end on Jan. 15 for manual submissions and Feb. 12 for online submissions, DepEd said.

The Private Education Assistance Committee will release the results on its website on the third Friday of March.

All successful applicants will receive certificates confirming their inclusion in the program.

The voucher program will only cover two years regardless of the number of years it takes for the student to finish senior high school.

DepEd said vouchers are only valid if redeemed within the first semester of the school year immediately after the completion of Grade 10. Payments will be released on a per semester basis to the private senior high school provider where the beneficiary is enrolled.

Beneficiaries may be disqualified from the program if they drop out in the middle of the school year, do not re-enroll in the next school year (unless for medical reasons), are retained on the same level, transfer to another private school in the middle of the school year, or transfer to a public senior high school.

Beneficiaries are allowed to shift to another track after the first semester of Grade 11 within the same school, or after the school year in the same or a different senior high school.

DepEd has requested a budget of over P12 billion to cover the voucher system, which intends to cover the costs of enrolment of Grade 10 graduates of public high schools who wish to enrol in private senior high schools.